an to applaud.
Silence being restored, I tried to continue my discourse. But in spite
of the most violent efforts, I could not tear my eyes from those two
living lights to which they were so mysteriously riveted. That was
not all. By a more amazing phenomenon still, and contrary to all the
principles of my whole life, I began to improvise. God alone knows if
this was the result of my own freewill!

Under the influence of a strange, unknown and irresistible force
I delivered with grace and burning eloquence certain philosophical
reflections on the toilet of women in the course of the ages; I
generalised, I rhapsodised, I grew eloquent-God forgive me-about the
eternal feminine, and the passion which glides like a breath about those
perfumed veils with which women know how to adorn their beauty.

The man with the Assyrian beard never ceased staring steadily at me.
And I still continued to speak. At last he lowered his eyes, and then I
stopped. It is humiliating to add that this portion of my address, which
was quite as foreign to my own natural impulse as it was contrary to the
scientific mind, was rewarded with tumultuous applause. The young woman
in the north balcony clapped her hands and smiled.

I was followed at the reading-desk by a member of the Academy who seemed
visibly annoyed at having to be heard after me. Perhaps his fears were
exaggerated. At any rate he was listened to without too much impatience.
I am under the impression that it was verse that he read.

The meeting being over, I left the hall in company with several of my
colleagues, who renewed their congratulations with a sincerity in which
I try to believe.

Having paused a moment on the quay near the lions of Creuzot to exchange
a few greetings, I observed the man with the Assyrian beard and his
beautiful companion enter a _coupe_. I happened accidentally to be
standing next to an eloquent philosopher, of whom it is said that he is
equally at home in worldly elegance and in cosmic theories. The young
lady, putting her delicate head and her little hand out of the carriage
door, called him by name and said with a slight English accent:

"My dear friend, you've forgotten me. That's too bad!"

After the carriage had gone I asked my illustrious colleague who this
charming person and her companion were.

"What!" he replied, "you do not know Miss Morgan and her physician
Daoud, who cures all diseases by means of magnetism, hypnotism, and
suggestion?